The organic nature of film indexing: an investigative experience from the filmmakers’ works of the Brazilian movement Cinema Novo

Social epistemology is opposed to an individualist approach to the theory of knowledge, as it starts from the idea of knowledge as a social product in which different subjects act in relations of epistemic dependence, whether among individuals or among groups or institutions. Given its contextual nature in time and space, social epistemology focuses special attention on interactive relationships (such as those of cooperation and collaboration), similarly to scientific environment, addressing issues related to mutual collaborations, group knowledge and to epistemic communities, the latter strongly associated with the social division of labor. In the context of indexing films, one of the most complex challenges is the existence of dynamic visual and sound elements, thematic content, and various narrative, descriptive, and argumentative structures that have a strong semiotic nature, and it applies to all types of film collections including cinematheque collections, personal archives, and libraries. Thus, the present paper aims to discuss indexing possibilities for film documentation from the perspective of social epistemology, utilizing the experience with collections related to Brazilian Cinema Novo, from the application of the following facets: Action, Associated person, Character, Commentary, Emotion, Feature, Genre, Object, Relation, Theme, and Time. The research experience revealed that the analysis and representation of film documentation requires: acknowledging the contextual and organic nature of this universe in such a way that the processes of knowledge organization and representation must extend beyond the product itself – the film – to encompass all related documentation, which precedes, accompanies and succeeds it, often from personal and institutional archives. Without accounting for such organicity, the representation suffers from impoverishment due to its incompleteness. Additionally, the representation facets of this knowledge that materializes as a social product, is the need for these to reflect not only the established epistemic dependencies between subjects throughout this process but also that they were documented in different ways and at different times.